Last Tuesday, the Senate voted on the United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which would extend to the rest of the world many of the rights that disabled Americans already have. Republicans voted it down; the treaty fell five votes short of the two-thirds majority required for ratification.
But the actions of some of the Republicans who voted against the treaty make one doubt how many of them truly believed they were doing the right thing.
To begin with, as Foreign Policy reports, the United States International Council on Disabilities and many other groups “had been assured by numerous GOP senators that they would vote in favor of ratification” before they in fact voted “no.”
Josh Rogin writes: “Several GOP senators actually RSVP’d for a reception held at the Capitol Tuesday morning to honor [former Sen. Robert J.] Dole, a disabled veteran himself, for his decades of work on behalf of the disabled community.”
In fact, Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts and his Kansas colleague Jerry Moran voted “no” after personally promising Dole they would support the treaty.
Before the vote, Dole rolled in a wheelchair onto the Senate floor, where, as Roll Call’s Meredith Shiner writes:
“One by one, Senators of both parties approached [Dole], with former colleagues gently resting their hands on his shoulder or reaching out to his left hand… Then, one by one, after Dole was wheeled off the floor, most Republicans voted against the measure. Many members did not register their ‘nay’ votes verbally, instead whispering their opposition directly to the clerk or gesturing their hands from their chairs.”
These senators shook Dole’s hand, looked him in the eye and, once he left the floor, turned their backs on him, on his fellow disabled veterans and on disabled people throughout the world. They did not stand tall and proud against the treaty. No, these senators “whispered their opposition” or “gestured from their chairs.” (Remember that senators, no strangers to C-Span, know that the network’s microphones can pick up their votes if they wish to be heard.)
These were not the actions of men and women who were proud of their vote. These senators knew, privately, that their vote was wrong.
James Downie is a columnist for The Washington Post.
Hypocritical cowardice.
No, what they are, for the whole of the Country to see, are Senators that showed political and personal cowardice soley for the purpose of showing that they considered loyalty to their political clique more important than their responsibility to the voter’s and citizens. That Bob Dole had to sit there and get the knife in the back was about as low a political show of responsibility to Country and our veteran’s as one could imagine. It also gives us all, vet’s especially, a real preview as to just how the GOP is going to take seriously, and vote, on the upcomng VA Appropriations. The 2014 election cycle is still a ways off but this vote, the stab-in-the-back and the public facesmacking that the GOP gave the disabled, should give us all a real good reason to start keeping track of the House and Senate GOP’s voting record on both the disabled and the Vet’s issue’s that come up. History has a nasty way of coming around on the wheel that those of us who have served have seen. And it has a very quiet way of coming around whan it’s least expected.
Both sides of the Isle do it, depending on the issue. The experiment known as the United States of America is almost over.
Time for you to get a passport? If you don’t like where you are…….then move.
Smile, I keep telling the Tea Partiers who are so unhappy with the outcome of this past election cycle the same thing – Somalia would be a great place for them…. But they aren’t leaving.
Maybe they could join the criers who needed counseling after 2000 and 2004 and whined they should leave. Oh wait, they decided to stick around because the pendulum ALWAYS swings.
Not Somalia. Rhodesia and I’m sure that Mugabe and his bunch can’t wait to see them get of the plane in Harare.
maybe he can get an Isle seat on the ride out of here.
I agree. Both sides of the aisle have put the American dream on the ropes. This has been done mostly in the name of greed. Starting with our own government holding the door open and practically inviting American businesses to pack up and move to a communist nation for fun and profit. We have been warned many times by very intelligent people over the span of our history that greed is the Achilles heel of capitalism. We have chosen to ignore those warnings over the last 30 years or so and now we are limping. I believe that we can heal ourselves by buying local and buying American. The top 1% and their political lap dogs, on both sides of the aisle, have seen their wealth explode by 300% over the last 20 years by hoping in bed with the communists. Every time someone walks out of a store with another bag of Chinese crap, we are just rewarding them for their lack of patriotism. The fastest way to screw these traitors and take our economy and our country back is to buy American, or just don’t buy. Kick them all square in the wallet.
There will always be an America… it’s just won’t be in the United States.
Might want to beat the rush. Where to next?
Deplorable, but can one be really surprised from that crew.
Another bad UN treaty. Just another attack on the sovereignty of the US. Thank you to those senators who voted no. Like most UN treaties the US would be held to a standard that few other countries would be held to. Opening us up to more propaganda, law suits, and denunciations by countries with abysmal human rights records themselves.
Nothing is stopping all these third world he11 holes and dictatorships from signing on. Many have already but will actually do nothing to help their disabled.
Out of purely idle curiosity, can anyone recollect any senator doing something politically courageous in the last, say, twenty years? By “politically courageous” I mean something that would put their re-election in danger.
Profiles in cowardice when Republicans band together, yet profiles in courage when Democrats do? Yawn. No wonder the WaPo is daily losing its readership.
Don’t you know? It’s cynical when Rs do it; it’s “principled” when Ds do it.
Pretty much!
interesting you should say that since Fox is bleeding viewers like a stuck pig